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be running wild with blowing manes and tails, challenging humans to catch them, confronting each other in mock battles, and defying fences that imprisoned them. Here, nothing like that was happening. These horses looked dull and resigned to captivity.
    That’s what Kit thought was a sorry sight.
    â€œWait until you see wild horses trucked in fresh off the range,” Sam said. “Or watch them being loaded into the trailers after the auction.”
    From the corner of her eye, Sam caught Jake’s expression. There, then instantly gone, it had been a look of disbelief.
    Mustangs looked wild and beautiful when they were fresh off the range or being loaded because theywere terrified. Had she really been offering horses’ panic as entertainment?
    Sam was ashamed. She didn’t know what to say.
    â€œAm I ever glad to see some friendly faces.” A female voice floated from the direction of the office. “I never would have let Hugh take time off, but he called me a grinch!”
    Sam, Jake, and Kit turned to see Brynna approaching. In her khaki uniform and official nametag, Brynna still managed to look confident and very much the boss, though she was round with pregnancy.
    Jake frowned, and Sam remembered how he’d steadied Brynna to keep her from falling the other day. It was pretty clear he thought she should begin her maternity leave now. In contrast, Kit grinned at Brynna as you would at a kitten.
    â€œBrynna, this is Jake’s brother Kit,” Sam rushed to introduce them.
    â€œThe bronc rider,” Brynna said with a nod. “Welcome.” She extended her hand and clasped Kit’s in a firm grip. “You’ve come to the right place if you’d like a horse to help with your homework.” Her eyes swept the corrals of wild horses before halting on Kit’s cast. Her lips pursed with interest, not pity. “Did a bronc do that?”
    â€œYep,” Kit said. “It’s nothing.”
    A faint alarm went off in Sam’s mind. Twice she’d heard Kit dismiss the injury as “nothing.” Knowingwhat she did about cowboys, she wasn’t convinced. She’d been with Jake when he’d broken his leg in a riding accident. It had been a compound fracture. The bone had actually stabbed through his skin, but Jake had dismissed the blood and pain and just asked her to find his hat and get it back on his head.
    â€œAre you still riding?” Brynna asked.
    â€œTakin’ a little time off for the holidays,” Kit answered.
    â€œYou probably deserve it, so I won’t draft you to help Jake and Sam move the horses around. You can just watch them and”—Brynna’s voice took on a wheedling tone—“shop for a new horse?”
    â€œI might do that,” Kit said.
    At first Sam thought he was just being polite, but Kit’s eyes drifted to the stallion corral. What if he hadn’t been joshing with Jake when he suggested a wild horse showdown?
    She’d have to worry about it later, because Brynna was rattling off instructions, telling her and Jake to make sure the foals and yearlings were in pens up close where people could see them, to check that the corrals were labeled according to the horses inside, and to make sure each animal had a red and white rope loop holding a number around its neck.
    â€œAnd though I hate it, I guess you’d better make sure all the older horses—everyone over ten,” she added with a grimace, “are moved out of the adoption corrals. I think that’s already done, but Hugh left afew mature mares and a few burros from southern Nevada, and Norman figured it out.”
    â€œWhy’s that a problem, now?” Kit asked.
    â€œCongress voted to pull horses over ten years old from the adoption program,” Brynna began.
    â€œThat’s right. I heard about that,” Kit said, then paused next to a corral. “And these are the studs?”
    â€œYes, though